brickclubfandomcom-20200213-history
1.5.2-Sarah1281
Brick!Club 1.5.2 Madeleine I wonder if we’ll all actually have the same chapter name this time. Things people know about Madeleine: about fifty, does not want to pay attention to you, but he’s really a good person. I would have thought they could also say that he was a brilliant inventor/businessman, really rich, and doesn’t like talking to people but apparently they’re not sure about those attributes. And with the rate he gives money away, I suppose I can’t blame him. He apparently managed to build a factory at the end of his second year there when he already made a lot of money so I guess they were working out of an already used but unsuitable building before. Madeleine gives everyone who needs a job a job unless they don’t live up to his moral standards. Well, it makes sense not to want to hire bad people and lots of companies today have bullshit morality clauses. What bothers me is that the men are required to have good will and the women are required to have good morals. No, not good. Pure. The men don’t need pure will or great will, just general good will. There is room for mistakes here. And I know that how they define good morals in women and men are radically different but this is really ridiculous. Even if good morals in men does not require them to be virgins and perfect little angels, I think it is absurd that Valjean does not demand that his male workers have the good morals as dictated by this highly sexist society. Apparently the men can do whatever they like and violate even their standards of good morals as long as they are well-meaning about it. Having definitely not been in prison for nineteen years with little if any women around and some painfully won expert knowledge on men’s morality, it’s understandable why he didn’t think to apply that knowledge he doesn’t have. If he did have it that would make his apparent lack of interest in trying to get his men to have good morals even more ridiculous. I just feel like he really didn’t think this one through, he just opened up his factory and had to start having his forepeople hire people and vaguely told them to hire good people. And then he probably went off to go stare at cabbages and offer them money or something. As I said, I don’t blame him for wanting his workers to be good people. He just seems to have failed to grasp, rather ironically if he had any secrets in his past, that some people have ‘done wrong’ and are desperately looking for a second chance. He’s not refusing them on purpose, it just doesn’t occur to him that those people who have failed his moral litmus test need his help more than anyone else since no one else will take them. Perhaps its his lack of personal experience in their place. Madeleine probably has the best public school teachers in France since he offers them a stipend more than twice their official salary. And he invented preschool! He’s also clearly not thinking that far ahead because him personally funding everything, even in a perfect world, only lasts as long as he lives to fund it. Forward-thinking does not seem to be something he excels at. And it apparently only occurred to him to get a little money saved up for himself should he ever mysteriously have legal troubles he is definitely not anticipating after he spent a million francs on the community. Also not terribly practical for what if something had happened before he started saving? Keeping it in the bank seems a little risky, though, in case he has to flee in a hurry. Does he suspect people will rob him? And maybe it’s not fair but I resent Laffitte and his people. Apparently he can’t even be religious and charitable in peace without people thinking it’s some sort of political move. That says something about the state of society. But he really has nothing else in his life but his religious, does he? I wonder what he would have thought of being appointed king out of nowhere. Was the king in the habit of randomly appointing people to positions or did he, like everyone, think that Madeleine was courting it? People don’t need to officially put themselves forward or anything? Poor Madeleine, he’s so misunderstood. And what’s the deal with “Father Madeleine”? I’m guessing there’s no exact translation for whatever that means in French but I don’t get it; he’s not a priest. What’s the difference between this and Monsieur? Is ‘Father’ more familiar? I cannot imagine that Madeleine is particularly familiar to these people who make wild speculations about him and know nothing of him. Of course the upper-class people, when they finally deign to invite him, get all pissy and dismiss him as a brute when he refuses. But at this point, he probably wouldn’t have known what to do with society anyway. I wonder why the king was so persistent in giving Madeleine some sort of honor. He didn’t want to be mayor, he didn’t want the cross, and so they try to make him mayor again? Did he really expect him to change his mind (I mean, he did but did he expect it?) The children are all he really wants to be happy and he clearly missed his calling as a schoolteacher. I wonder if he has any lost children in his past he’s reminded of here. And he’s guilted into the position he’s unqualified for and probably won’t even enjoy because he at least cares enough to try and help everyone and someone accused him of trying not to do good which is ridiculous if you look at his track-record here. But yeah, he’s probably just completely stunned by how things are working out here. Commentary Pilferingapples Hah, now I’m suspecting Valjean of knowing the title of his book. “How are things going so well? THIS IS NOT THE POINT OF THIS BOOK.” Good point about him not being very good at forward-planning— and so in keeping with the survival mindset he surely learned from prison. What’s the point of planning when every aspect of the day is an order, and escape becomes impossible? And this probably does feed into his problematic rules for worker morality, yes. I get the general impression the King kept offering him mayorship sort of at the demand of the townspeople? Or their STRONG SUGGESTION at least? Is— is that how it would have worked? HELP SOMEONE EXPLAIN THIS POLITICAL OFFICE.